EMISSIONS DOWN:
IF LIBS REALLY CARE ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,
THEY SHOULD SUPPORT TRUMP
Andrew J. Sciascia - 11 Jan 2020 - www.westernjournal.com
The results are in, and despite much squawking from the climate change left in recent months, U.S. carbon emissions did in fact reportedly fall over the past year.
According to preliminary estimates from the Rhodium Group, an independent American research organization, energy and economic sector data show the U.S. decreased its greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 2.1 percent in 2019.
Following a marked increase in 2018, the firm reported that the decrease, “due almost entirely to a drop in coal consumption,” has left the nation emitting roughly 12 percent less greenhouse gases than it was in 2005.
In fact, the U.S. saw a record 18 percent decrease in coal-fired power generation this past year, meaning coal power generation was at its lowest level since 1975.
Somehow, despite constant claims that the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement would leave the U.S. trailing European and Asian nations as a moral leader in combating the supposedly imminent threat of climate change, America is very much on the right track.
Granted, the U.S. is not on pace to meet its Copenhagen Accord target of a 17 percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2020, and is dramatically off course to reach the Paris Agreement’s unreasonable target of 26 to 28 percent reduction by 2025, according to the Rhodium Group.
But in a world where those still signed on to such agreements have failed to keep even their most basic promises, and global emissions have in fact risen rather than fallen, no reasonable party could dare argue America has forsaken its role as a world leader.
While making the U.S. more energy independent, the Trump administration has still managed to cut national coal consumption in the energy sector while encouraging the market to pursue alternative solutions.
According to researchers Trevor Houser and Hannah Pitt at Rhodium, “An increase in natural gas generation offset some of the climate gains from this [2019] coal decline, but overall power sector emissions still decreased by almost 10%.”
In laymen’s terms, a cleaner, albeit imperfect, option has begun to see mainstream popularity in the U.S. energy sector: natural gas.
But the alarmist climate change left cares not for honest, middle-of-the-road solutions such as this.
They care far less about everyone making measured steps toward a better world, and far more about instituting a socialist, one-world-one-love utopia where the successful and the exceptional are forced to carry not only their own weight, but the weight of the unable and unwilling as well.
This is precisely the reason leftists cannot simply advocate for a transition to natural gas or nuclear energy.
In fact, they fight against such things, instead championing economy-crippling green energy deals that include universal income and subsidized wind and solar energy research and development projects paid for by the middle and upper classes.
The American people are unmatched in their ability to rise to the challenge.
Time and again their ingenuity, innovation, moral leadership, and raw heart have been mobilized to better — and dare I say save — the world.
Every reasonable person versed in world history knows this.
President Donald Trump certainly knows this. Perhaps he knows it best of all.
More importantly, however, Trump knows the left and the international community are beyond willing to take advantage of those facts.
And that is precisely the problem with things like the Green New Deal and the Paris Agreement.
They require hard-working Americans to double their sacrifices, subsidize global innovation and go broke in the process.
This week’s numbers reveal that without such agreements, we can make a difference and continue to thrive in the process.
If that isn’t true climate leadership, I don’t know what is.
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